Starting on the Ground Floor

The next morning, Gerald and I started on a project he had been itching to do: installing the pine floor.

Gerald had the pine floorboards milled with tongue and groove, like the ceilings. He started by putting a bead of Liquid Nails down for the first board.

Then stapled it in place with this flooring tool.

The tool sat on the lip of the tongue and was loaded with staples. You hit the little black rubber dealie with the rubber mallet and the machine drove a staple in to the floor.

Fitting the boards together was way harder than it looked on the DIY shows. The rubber mallet didn't do the trick. We had to use a sledge hammer against another piece of siding to close up the gaps. It was tiring, difficult work.

After shattering the first board, Gerald improvised a piece of flooring to hammer against that was tapered at the right angle to make the task a little easier. We were able to get about six boards done before we called it quits. Basically, we wanted to be sure the tool worked before we left, so we could begin again in earnest on our next trip.